


Under Lock and Key

by Wanderbird



Series: This World Could Yet Be Kind [3]
Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Sort of major character death?, Stand Alone, post-major character death?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 14:29:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18693406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderbird/pseuds/Wanderbird
Summary: Loki died at the Mad Titan's hand, and fell lifeless to the deck of the ship, leaving Thor to fight for what remained of Asgard on his own.In other words, Loki died.Here's what happened next.





	Under Lock and Key

He had hoped it would be a hero’s death.

The last remnant of Asgard’s people, a blade in hand, defending his brother and himself against the Titan who would inevitably destroy it all.

Maybe he simply couldn’t reach it. Maybe the jotnar were too evil, too monstrous, maybe they could never go to Asgard no matter their deeds. Or maybe it was him. Either way. These were the mists of Niflheim. Humid, suffocating, slightly too warm.

Loki knelt.

Blue knees pressed to rough and barren stone.  
And of course, because nothing could ever be easy, he was stuck in this repulsive Jotun form. A breath trailed from his lungs. How long had he been walking now? A year? A day? His arms crashed to the ground to hold him up, his shoulders shook with the effort of keeping his head raised. He could not give up. Would not give up. It wasn’t fair. He had seen the sunlight, seen himself free and alive in a vision, he _knew_ what a vision was, how could it be wrong?  
How could it be wrong.  
Loki maneuvered one leg beneath him once more. Stood. Began to stumble onward. Was this the curse of Hel then, truly, that the damned within it wander for eternity? Would he forever be alone? Or was that too because of who he was, this cursed skin now closed about him like a trap? He thought he would at least be able to see his children after death. Jormungandr. Fenris, who Thor claimed had at last been caught and Sleipnir, lost in the blaze of Ragnarok. Hél, a child of barely eight summers, but who made Odin more nervous than any of her siblings, ever since the beginning. Arms clutched to his sides, Loki staggered forward across the planes of eternity.

And after the stamping of hours uncounted, cool blue feet on hallowed ground, he fell.

~~~

“Father.”  
The voice of a little girl. Or was it a magpie? Loki woke.  
Before her stood a child, maybe eight years old, the right half of her face hidden by drops of straight black hair and her eyes shining just as red as Loki’s.  
“…Hél.” Loki whispered.  
No reaction.  
“Hél, min skatt, I’m sorry.” Loki bit her lip. The silence in this place, the silence that burst from the seams of this world filled her with dread. Loki could not help but speak. “I know why you unnerved Odin so, I know why it was so hard to find your name.” The little girl still made no move, her own feet just as bare as Loki’s, her body clothed only in a stained and tattered tunic. Loki dragged herself to her knees, forced herself to face her daughter. “I should not have pushed it, should not have risked making Father unhappy with a name I knew would cause only trouble. I should have refused. But after Fenrir—it was the name, that name, I knew it, and Sigyn managed to find mention of another Fenrir in some ancient text on Svartalfheim, and your name beside it. I wanted to make him nervous. I’m sorry.” The guilt poured from her very skin, she could not hold it back. Not here. “It is unjust that you should be here, Hél, for I know now it was Odin’s fault you died. A disease truly that obscure and that uncurable? It never would have happened on its own, you never came into contact with it, Sigyn was right. I should have doubted him.” Loki hesitated. “I never should have named you thus.”  
The world grew still.  
“Never,” the little girl spoke once more, her words each clipped and cold. “Mother?” Hél paused. How unnerving was that stare, so like her own in this forsaken body, only inset into pale, pinkish flesh instead of blue. All of a sudden, Hél stood mere inches away, tall and hard and more imposing than she had any right to be. “This name is perfect!” No smile graced the child’s face. “This name is bright, and dark, and belongs to the living and the dead, and it is _mine,_ mother, it is mine.”  
“Min skatt…”  
The child erupted into laughter, a clash of swords against the thick and constant mists. “There is much you have to be sorry for, mother, but I have never been among them!” Was that joy? “Eternity in this place is dull and empty. I am neither! Instead, I am hidden, and govern these hollow masses in the absence of the goddess of death that should rule this place, because I am Hél! I share her name.” A return to that impassive expression, abrupt as a stone-built wall. “Would you know more?”

Goddess of Death.  
Loki blinked. Héla was the goddess of death, and these were the realms of the dead. And Hél was the child of Loki, who had apparently inherited her parent’s scheming nature. She answered carefully. “I… do believe I would.” For the first time in however long since the Mad Titan broke her neck, Loki felt a smile cross her face.  
She was dead, but her child—one of them, at least—was safe.  
She was dead, but death would not be a torment.  
The smile faded. She was dead.

The young Hél hesitated. “I am the Queen of Hél,” she answered at last. “I rule the dead. I do not save them. And the true—the _other_ queen,” she corrected, “would not be near so gentle with her subjects, the other queen would not cease in planning her own revival. I saw her,” the child admitted. “I hid from her.” Hél could not, Loki realized, afford to stray too far out of character. “I have no power to return the dead to life, but mother, while there is much I cannot do, I can expel you from my realm. Strike you from the Books of Hel.” She paused. “A banishment.”  
Loki stared. Banishment. Her own child would banish her, and she would never again be able to see Hel, or Fenrir, or Jormungandr. Or Sleipnir. But on the other hand… Hél, the full-grown Hél, would hardly be kind to either of them if or when she returned. What were the odds that the goddess would survive forever on the ruins of Asgard? Their days would be numbered in this realm. And if young Hél were caught upon her return… why risk the both of them? And if He—if _Thanos,_ for surely it could do no harm to speak that name among the dead—if Thanos would succeed, had not already, how did Loki know it would not also murder half the dead?  
But banishment, too, would be a risk.  
Where would she go?

She had to try.

Loki squeezed her eyes shut. Thin, cool arms wrapped around her—Hél, she realized, and gripped back just as strongly.  
“Banish me.”  
And the world went white.

~~~

Loki landed with a fleshy thump.  
He was alone, now, for real, staring up at endless white. Was his vision still malfunctioning? Or was—no, he realized as he propped himself up on reddened elbows. The world simply was white, here, a perfectly flat plane with no visible edge. On the plus side, it seemed that he was back in an aesir form, all pink skin and black hair and eyes which did not tint the whole world red.  
Where… was he?  
He frowned. His ribs no longer ached where they had fallen onto stone, his feet no longer bloodied from the walking. Even his neck, still bruised and painful in the depths of Niflheim, felt unremarkable. Neutral. Did he even have a body, here? Loki couldn’t tell. He felt cut off from his dimensional pocket, though, just as he had before. Perhaps he had simply exchanged mists for void, after all.

Void, Loki noticed with a creeping sense of realization, he really was in a sort of void. _The_ Void. Wasn’t it? He could not enter any living realm, being no longer alive himself. He had been barred by the manner of his death from Valhalla and banished now from Hél. Where else was there to be?  
The Void.  
Loki knew very little about the Void. No-one knew much on the subject, to be honest. Or at least, no-one he had met. He remembered only a phrase, a snatch from some half-forgotten book of lore, _you will find only that which you bring with you._ He would find only himself. A shudder.  
He would much rather avoid getting to know himself further, thanks, Loki already knew he was a monster. The thought of finding out exactly how true that statement was hardly appealed to him. Not that he had any other choice. Letting out a quiet sigh, Loki started walking.

And stopped.

This was getting him nowhere.  
This, this pointless, unending walking, with as little thought for the destination as for the source. He did not even know how long it had been since Hél had cast him out, for here in the Void not even his heartbeat seemed to persist to count the seconds, and his body felt as blank and empty as it had when he arrived. And besides, there would be no long-dead daughter to save him, this time, _only that which you bring with you._ Loki would have to get out of this herself. To start—she had been returned to an aesir shape upon arrival, so perhaps she could still alter _herself_ , even if she could not reach out to another plane. She closed her eyes. Ordinarily, this would not require concentration, but she felt the need to pay attention for any information it might yield. With a prickling of seidhr, she shifted. Long, ebon hair. Softer, if still decidedly angular features. Breasts and hips, perfectly proportioned from careful reference to those of Asgard’s women whose work was of a carnal nature, this body was as much a weapon as it was Loki. After a moment—fascinating.

Any other time, Loki had long noticed, shifting into a shape she had already set filled her entire body with pins and needles for the few seconds it took for the change to sweep over her. This was deliberate, temporarily disconnecting her pain receptors for the time it took to bend and break flesh into another mold. But now… the only staticky feeling had passed along her skin _._ Yet nothing hurt, and she was now in female form, which meant… it was as much an illusion as a change in form. Loki let out a tiny hiss of breath. Her wild guess earlier was right. There was no need for physical matter in the Void, so she did not have one, only a sort of, sort of solid construct for a body. _That_ certainly held possibilities.  
A hummed note of contemplation, unnaturally loud in the all-consuming silence. She had only herself in this place, but perhaps her “self” for the purposes of the Void could extend beyond the confines of her body. Even if she could not make anything of use, it would at least allow her to more clearly understand her own thoughts.  Loki squeezed her eyes shut. It should be just like shapeshifting, right? So… relax, she told herself. She had to relax, and clear her mind, and push her seidhr out like _this_ into the world around her and hold it like _that…_ Loki hummed as she worked. This was much less painful than unguided shapeshifting usually was! After some indeterminate amount of time, a voice woke her.

“My child.”  
Loki froze. Was that… no. It couldn’t be, it, it was only herself. Some hidden part of her own mind, that just happened to _imitate_ Frigga, not the woman herself. Loki swallowed the uneasiness in her throat, and opened her eyes.  
The Void was no longer a blank white plane about her. In a raised circle surrounding her, Loki had constructed a sort of platform, a vision of home with soft furs on the ground and the faint but omnipresent smell of woodsmoke. A table took up the center of the “room”, simply built but of lovely polished wood, with a bench along one side that still gave off the distinctive scent of pine, and drying herbs hanging from the ceiling. The light here was warm, barely bright enough to see clearly, issued from the handful of magelights she and Sigyn had put up long ago. Imitations of them, at least. The only indications that Loki was in fact still in the Void were the backdrop of stars that extended in all directions, and the way the ceiling seemed to waver in and out of existence. She always did love her clandestine little home with Sigyn.

“Loki!” That voice again. But where… Frigga wasn’t here. The room was empty, wasn’t it? But for a—a little grey falcon perched on the back of the bench. Loki started.  
“Mother?” she could not restrain herself from asking.  
The bird tilted its head. Even if this looked like Frigga, Loki tried to remind herself, even if it looked like Frigga’s falcon shape, it could not truly be her. It was only Loki, in another guise. Right? When it spoke, its voice was still impossibly human, nothing like the screech of such a bird. “Loki, Loki, child of none \ You will not rest before the sun,” it chanted, still in her adopted mother’s voice.  
Loki bit her lip. “What are you talking about?”  
“You know the answer: change or die \ For even life can be a lie”  
“I don’t understand,” Loki sat heavily on the bench to stare at the falcon. It was not so difficult, now, to remember that this was not truly Frigga. After all, Frigga had tended to be remarkably up-front with her advice.  
“Here every hour the raven knocks \ It cannot pass the body’s locks,”  
Simple enough. If her falcon-self were to be believed, Loki would need a body if she was to return to the world—But she already knew that. She may have access to her seidhr here in the Void, but being dead, she had no life energy of her own to tie it to, and no way to generate more. If the Void were not so empty, her seidhr would have been drawn away by everything around her, all those living things and pieces of matter generating and drawing energy to themselves. Sure, Loki had a good idea how to leave the Void. But as long as she remained dead and bodiless, her seidhr would be near-instantly swept away. And with it would go everything that remained of Loki, a fractured ghost too thinly spread for conscious thought. She would be naught but dust. Unless she could spontaneously return to life, her first order of business would have to be acquiring a body.

Change or die.

Stars, Loki would rather die than _cease_ to change, would she not? So this would be an ideal opportunity: she would change, _and_ she would die. This Loki, after all, was already dead. If there was one thing this short sojourn in the Void had taught her, it was this reminder: Magic was just a story told, and the Void more sensitive to it than most. Tell the universe around her that Loki was, in fact, a twelve-by-twelve foot room containing lights and a table and a falcon and a jotun abomination wearing the skin of an aesir, and the universe listened.

This Loki was dead.  
So if she told the universe about another self, a different Loki stricken from the books of Hel and who had never died (and never lived), never burned (and never hid), would not the universe listen?

The falcon spoke. “Unsleeping rest in other’s bones \ To wake after the end has flown.”

She may be too late. And she may not remember.  
But she had to try.

~~~

One day, beside the Seine along the streets of Paris, a child woke.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> I totally want to write more in this universe, so subscribe to the series if you want to make sure you see it <3
> 
> -Ent
> 
> Min skatt, by the way, is a somewhat older version of a Norwegian pet name meaning "my treasure"


End file.
